A controversial research project that recently won China's national science award faces plagiarism accusations.

A post on Github, an online repository service provider, claimed that the research "borrowed" ideas from an open source project.

A Github user who goes by the name "KraneSun" said in a post on Monday that the "transparent computing" research, conducted by Zhang Yaoxue, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of Central South University in China, is "in effect a remote desktop" application that "copied from an open source project" by another Github user named "iordan iordanov." "KraneSun" said he discovered it after searching for an embedded software message from the research's online demo.

In a follow-up reply, "iordan iordanov" thanked people who found out and informed him about the alleged plagiarism. "It is a great honor my project has won such a prestigious prize regardless of the circumstances," he wrote, adding that he will follow the discussion with great interest.

Zhang's team won the 2014 State Natural Science award, the top award granted by China's Ministry of Science and Technology, for research on "transparent computing."

The research, according to the Xinhua News Agency, "invented the concept of transparent computing, pervasive programming … which can access and accomplish tasks on any type of device, such as personal computers or intelligent appliances." "Using the open source code is just like citing other researchers in a research paper. The code can be shared but you cannot take credit for other people's work," Dong Jielin, a professor from Soochow University's Dongwu Business School, told the Global Times.

Zhang, also a former official of the Ministry of Education, could not be reached for comment as of Tuesday. His research team from Central South University allegedly admitted on their Sina Weibo account that they used an open source code but stressed that they followed the GPL, or General Public License. The statement was later retracted. GPL is the most widely used free software license that ensures the freedom to use the software whenever the work is distributed, even when the work is changed or added.

However, Zhang's online demo video claims that the copyright belongs to his labs at Central South University and Tsinghua University.

Zhang's research is facing considerable criticism as many, including computer scientists, claim his theory is identical to "cloud computing" and that his research "is of little academic value."

The China Computer Federation published an open letter in January, urging the government to stop interfering in the selection process of the science awards.